LinuxDevices.com: A developer’s review of REDSonic’s Embedded Linux toolkit

“Many may consider REDSonic to be a minor player in the
Embedded Linux market, with significantly less prominence than the
products offered by Lineo, MontaVista, Red Hat, and LynuxWorks .
But as we will see, REDSonic’s RED-Builder has some features and
characteristics that are quite competitive with the other Embedded
Linux toolsets.

…Sadly, however, getting to this realization requires getting
past an extremely unfavorable initial reaction. Let me explain.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the RED-Builder box was
a shrink-wrapped package containing a short cable that connects to,
of all things, a software protection “dongle”. Now, sophisticated
Linux users are accustomed to the debate about whether software
should be open-source or proprietary. We all come down somewhere on
the ideological spectrum, with many of us accepting proprietary
code as the reality it is while preferring open source alternatives
when they exist. But it is hard to imagine more than a tiny
minority of Linux developers who will not feel put off by software
requiring a copy-protection dongle.

It is difficult to imagine what REDSonic hopes to accomplish
with this move. As the only Embedded Linux toolkit vendor having
such a requirement, it puts them at a definite disadvantage and
makes the other proprietary toolkit vendors look progressive by
comparison.”

Complete
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